A Proximate Remove

Queering Intimacy and Loss in The Tale of Genji

Reginald Jackson

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780520382541
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520382558
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Japanese History
• Index: Literature

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

How might queer theory transform our interpretations of medieval Japanese literature and how might this literature reorient the assumptions, priorities, and critical practices of queer theory? Through a close reading of The Tale of Genji, an eleventh-century text that depicts the lifestyles of aristocrats during the Heian period, A Proximate Remove explores this question by mapping the destabilizing aesthetic, affective, and phenomenological dimensions of experiencing intimacy and loss. The spatiotemporal fissures Reginald Jackson calls "proximate removes" suspend belief in prevailing structures. Beyond issues of sexuality, Genji queers in its reluctance to romanticize or reproduce a flawed social order. An understanding of this hesitation enhances how we engage with premodern texts and how we question contemporary disciplinary stances.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface. Benefits of the Doubt: Questioning Discipline and the Risks of Queer Reading
• Introduction
• 1. Translation Fantasies and False Flags: Desiring and Misreading Queerness in Premodern Japan
• 2. Chivalry in Shambles: Fabricating Manhood amid Architectural Disrepair
• 3. Going through the Motions: Half-Hearted Courtship and the Topology of Queer Shame
• 4. Queer Affections in Exile: Textual Mediation and Exposure at Suma Shore
• 5. From Harsh Stare to Reverberant Caress: Queer Timbres of Mourning in “The Flute”
• Conclusion. Learning from Loss
• Afterword. Teaching Removal
• Notes
• Bibliography